I have another gear related question. I know the hvl-f58 has 3 groups of flashes with ratio control, but the manual was a little vague on a couple of details:

- How many flashes can you have in each group?
- The ratios seem a little odd. So, you can choose I believe 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 as the ratio for a group, but what does that mean? Is it for instance, at the 4 setting, 1/4 of the power from the TTL exposure, or is this the actual power used for the flash with no TTL input?
- Is the commander/control unit (HVL-F58) controlled by the grouping as well? So, if you wanted to have only the HVL-F58 as a controller, with no input on exposure, are you limited to just 2 groups since you would have to turn off the controller group?

I have another gear related question. I know the hvl-f58 has 3 groups of flashes with ratio control, but the manual was a little vague on a couple of details:

- How many flashes can you have in each group?

More than one (except the control flash, the one that is on top of camera and set to CTRL+). If you want to have more than one flash on each group, set them all to "RMT" or "RMT2"

primitive wrote:

- The ratios seem a little odd. So, you can choose I believe 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 as the ratio for a group, but what does that mean? Is it for instance, at the 4 setting, 1/4 of the power from the TTL exposure, or is this the actual power used for the flash with no TTL input?

Say you set to 1:2:8, then the second one (RMT) is twice as bright as the master (control), and the third one (RMT2) is 8 times as bright as the master.

primitive wrote:

- Is the commander/control unit (HVL-F58) controlled by the grouping as well? So, if you wanted to have only the HVL-F58 as a controller, with no input on exposure, are you limited to just 2 groups since you would have to turn off the controller group?

Assuming you have more than one HVL-F58, and there's one on top of your camera, and you only want to use it as controller. You can set the flash ratio to something like "-:2:8" (instead of "1:2:8"), and the control flash would only output the control signal.

- The ratios seem a little odd. So, you can choose I believe 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 as the ratio for a group, but what does that mean? Is it for instance, at the 4 setting, 1/4 of the power from the TTL exposure, or is this the actual power used for the flash with no TTL input?

@Antony: Can you still ratio the flashes if in RMT/RMT2 mode? Also, essentially, you have only 2 groups since removing the controller from the exposure basically turns off the entire group, or is it that the controller group can only have one flash in any case?

@Pqtips: Thanks for the link. Seems to be what I needed, reading it now.

@Antony: Can you still ratio the flashes if in RMT/RMT2 mode? Also, essentially, you have only 2 groups since removing the controller from the exposure basically turns off the entire group, or is it that the controller group can only have one flash in any case?

Assuming I understand you correctly.
You can have more than one flash set to RMT, and more than one flash set to RMT2. (Based on diagram in page 66 of the manual.)

As for the Controller flash, I *guess* you can only have one flash (on top of the camera). However, come to think about it, you can try to add another flash by connecting to controller flash with FAMC1AM cable (I am not sure if it will work or not).

In page 66, the second diagram shows the ratio of "4:2:1". If you change it to "-:2:1", you should be able to achieve the ratio of 2:1 (both off-camera), while the controller flash would only send out the controlling signal.

Besides wireless ratio control, you can connect camera and flash(es) by cable(s). There are benefits of using cables instead of wireless.

OK, it's what I thought it was then. Well, was trying to justify if the HVL-f58 made sense at this point in time, and the answer is no. Nothing wrong with the flash per-se, just not exactly what I am looking for right now.